


A Hiding Space

by Eatgreass



Series: Statement fics [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Gen, Idk how to tag that part, No beta no editing we die like archival assistants, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), monsters?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: Statement of Yliana Wright, regarding a crawl space inside her bed. Statement given May 15, 2012.
Series: Statement fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814887
Kudos: 3





	A Hiding Space

**Author's Note:**

> My aunt had a crawl space inside her bed in their RV when I went to visit, and I can't stop thinking about how much it smelled like death. That was the inspiration for this.

There was a crawl space under my bed as a child. Most beds are open on the bottom, and a monster hides under the bed. Mine was not open on the bottom, but to get to the crawl space, you had to open up the mattress and crawl inside the bed, then pull on the latch to close the mattress again.

  
When I was little, I used that crawl space nearly every night. Some children cry when they get a nightmare, or run to their parents for comfort. Not me. I rolled off the bed, flipped the crawl space open, and closed myself inside. There was never a monster under my bed, because the monsters stood in the hallway with impossibly round glowing eyes, necks as long as arms (Which they did not have), and fourteen legs, all arranged like a spider. One night, from inside my bed, I peeked out and counted all the legs. To the best of my knowledge, all of the monsters had fourteen identical legs.

  
You won’t discredit me, right? I know that the monsters seem like the nightmare of a small child, and believe that if you must, the story isn’t about them, but don’t discredit me because they are here at the beginning of the story.

  
Anyway, as I was saying, I would often hide inside the bed to escape these monsters. As I got older, the crawl space became more comfortable. I kept a flashlight down there, along with some cosmic brownies and a book. As I got older, I also got larger, but that didn't bother me. I bumped my head on the top of the bed more times than I can count, and the whole space was barely large enough for me to pick up my book. I didn’t mind, though. I suppose that’s what put me in this position, begging help off of The Magnus Institute, of all places.

  
Sorry, I mean your institute is great and all, and who wouldn’t want to come and study paranormal science? It's just… odd.

  
This experience happened last week. The actually supernatural thing. I’m still not convinced as to whether the fourteen legged monsters were real, or if they were a figment of my childhood imagination. Anyway, I don’t hide inside of my bed anymore, since I’m a full grown adult, but I’ve never quite outgrown my love of small spaces. It’s weird, I know, and probably not something that a thirty year old woman should be doing in her free time, but I sit inside my closet. I keep a book in there, some snacks, and occasionally I bring a cup of tea in there, if I’m feeling like I can be very careful. Sometimes I sleep inside my closet. The walls press me in from all sides, and I really do love the feeling that I am the only one there. In retrospect, a lot of weird things happened when I was a child that could probably be classified as supernatural. There was an odd thing with the door to my closet a couple weeks ago, but that’s not important. I came to talk about the time that my door wouldn’t open. Now, the door handle gets jammed often, and it’s not much of a big deal. Usually, with a couple of good jerks, you can get it unstuck, so it’s not much to worry about.

This time, it didn’t stop sticking. Fine. That was fine. I had my phone in the closet, and was about to begin answering some of the emails I’d been neglecting, when the walls started to close in. Now I’m not a small woman, but I usually have enough wiggle room that I can stretch out inside the closet.

  
I couldn’t. In fact, I could barely move my arms around enough to find my phone. Plus, it wouldn’t turn on, and had probably died sometime in the night. So, I continued pulling on the door. I said before that I wasn’t a small woman, but I’m not a weak one either. As I continued jimmying the door, I somehow got so frantic that I pulled off the handle. It wasn’t a rickety handle, fuck, it wasn’t even coming loose. Ah well, I guess there are some downsides to being strong. The walls continued closing in, and I heard whispers coming from the inside of the walls. The funny thing that people never seem to realize about sinister whispers is that you can actually listen to them. And these whispers, they were not random. They were talking to me, telling me how to escape my hiding place. So I listened. I stopped trying to get through the door, stopped trying to put the handle back on, and instead I sunk to my knees, and embraced the closeness. The walls pressed me in, pushed me down, left bruises and gashes on my arms and legs from nails and odd pieces of wood. And still I sat there. I sat in my crawl space for hours, or at least it felt like hours. When I came out, it had only been ten minutes. Shaky and scared, with my knees scraped up and my back in pain, I was out of the room. Which, by the way, was just as big as it has always been.

  
I haven’t stopped sleeping in the closet. I haven’t let it push me out yet, and I’m not going to start now. After all, the closet doesn’t want to hurt me. I’m just another meat lump to feed on. I think that if I don’t let it feed, it’ll stop trying to eat me.

  
Ah well. This whole thing has been a nuisance and a half, and I had to take time off from work to ride the damn train all the way down here. You guys really need to set up a website.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @eatgreass you should totally come and say hi
> 
> Anyway I started listening to the nosleep podcast because I realized I liked horror, and wow it's not exactly what I thought it would be. A lot of it is good, but idk how to filter out the stories that have explicit sexual language and horror and which just talk about sex and swear a lot. Anyway if you have any good horror podcasts that don't use sexual language and content to create the horror please tell me in the comments I need some good short horror stories to listen to at work.


End file.
